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New St. Petersburg Governor Georgy Poltavchenko has finalized his new cabinet team, proposing three new additions, while deputy governors Alla Manilova and Alexei Sergeyev are set to leave City Hall.
Poltavchenko nominated his candidates for the positions of deputy governor to the Legislative Assembly on Friday, according to a member of the assembly. They are due to be confirmed by the assembly on Wednesday, Sept. 14, which would increase the number of deputy governors from eight to nine, he said.
One of the new deputy governors will reportedly be Sergei Vyazalov, who is currently deputy head of the Russian presidential office for foreign policy, who will be put in charge of City Hall’s financial-economic bloc, according to three deputies. The bloc is currently led by Mikhail Oseyevsky, head of the governor’s administration, who will remain in that position. City Hall’s press office declined to comment on the reshuffle.
For the position of deputy governor in charge of housing and municipal services, Poltavchenko nominated Sergey Kozyrev, a deputy governor and supervisor for the governor’s administration and government of the Leningrad Oblast since 2005. |
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RAINY DAYS
ALEXANDER BELENKY / SPT
The spire of the Peter and Paul Cathedral is reflected in a puddle. With rain forecast right through to next week, a Petersburg Umbrellas festival will be held in the Alexandrovsky Park on Saturday, at which vintage umbrellas will be displayed and artists will paint or draw on plain umbrellas. |
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Television presenter and journalist Dmitry Gubin, once the editor of the local English-Russian-language publication Pulse St. Petersburg, says he has been blacklisted by Russia’s state-controlled national television at the demand of former St. Petersburg governor Valentina Matviyenko.
Last week, Gubin wrote in his blog on Livejournal.com that he found out “by pure chance” that he had been fired and replaced as the co-host of the program “Vremenno Dostupen” (Temporarily Available) on the Tsentr Television channel (TVTs), which he presented alongside Dmitry Dibrov.
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Navy HQ Will Move
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The headquarters of the Russian navy are scheduled to move to St. Petersburg by 2012 according to Nikolai Makarov, current Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia and First Deputy Minister of Defense.
The announcement came Monday after years of controversy over the plan, with several top Russian military commanders against the idea for reasons of cost and efficiency.
“The main headquarters of the navy will be moved from Moscow to St. Petersburg by the end of 2011 or the first quarter of 2012,” RIA-Novosti cited Deputy Defense Minister Grigory Naginsky as saying.
Tsoi Commemorated
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 As St. Petersburg marked the 70th anniversary of the start of the devastating Siege of Leningrad last week, siege survivor Nina Dmitriyeva, a tiny but lively 80-year-old woman, recalled the most difficult moments of the siege in an interview with The St. |
All photos from issue.
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 YAROSLAVL — Alexander Galimov, the sole surviving player from the Yak-42 crash that wiped out the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl ice hockey team last week, died on Monday after five days in the hospital.
His death brings the death toll from the incident to 44. But doctors said the last survivor, flight attendant Alexander Sizov, released from an intensive care ward Monday, was expected to pull through. |
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VLADIVOSTOK — An army officer who fed dog food instead of canned beef to conscripts in the Far East was ordered to pay a fine of 202,000 rubles ($6,600) on Monday, Interfax reported. |
 VENICE, Italy — Russian director Alexander Sokurov’s “Faust,” a new take on the German legend about the quest for knowledge at all cost, won the Golden Lion prize at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday.
“Faust” tells the tale of a professor, played by Johannes Zeiler, who craves knowledge and sells his soul for the love of Margarete, played by Isolda Dychauk. |
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MOSCOW — The crash of an unmanned supply ship bound for the International Space Station last month was caused by a manufacturing flaw, the Federal Space Agency said. |
 MOSCOW — U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron arrived in Moscow this week for the first direct top-level Russian-British talks in the country in six years.
Cameron is leading a delegation including Foreign Secretary William Hague and BP chief executive Robert Dudley to meet President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in hopes of boosting economic ties and perhaps mending some fences. |
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MOSCOW — Yabloko party co-founder Grigory Yavlinsky will come out of political retirement to head the party’s list in the State Duma elections, the party announced Sunday. |
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LEIGHTON BUZZARD, U.K. –— British police freed 24 slaves, including two Russians, in a weekend raid on a traveler’s camp 60 kilometers from central London, news reports said Monday.
More than 200 police officers converged Sunday morning on the Green Acres caravan site in Leighton Buzzard, where they discovered men held in dog kennels, sheds and horse boxes, some too emaciated to eat normally. |
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 MOSCOW — Knockoff Chinese cigarettes from Kaliningrad, Italian wines actually made in the CIS and Bavarian car parts made in Podolsk imply a certain geographic schizophrenia for Russian consumers.
But the harsh reality is a market for counterfeit goods that some experts estimate to be worth between $3 billion and $6 billion per year. |
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MOSCOW — The shuffling of frequencies necessary to create a nationwide 4G network, outlined in plans approved by the Communications and Press Ministry on Thursday, will cost MTS its 70,000 WiMAX subscribers. |
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MOSCOW — A fan of military hardware, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin climbed inside a battle tank at a weapons exhibition in Nizhny Tagil last Friday, before promising 64 billion rubles ($2.2 billion) to state-owned Uralvagonzavod — the country’s largest producer of railcars and armored vehicles. |
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The first McDonald’s restaurant to open in St. Petersburg marks its 15th anniversary this month.
The first branch of the American fast food chain was located on Kammennoostrovsky Prospekt on the Petrograd Side. |
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 It was really pointless for observers to have spent the last three years asking the question: “Who is better, Medvedev or Putin?” and to have worked themselves up over the conundrum even more during the run-up to elections each fall.
Make no mistake: Dmitry Medvedev is not an alternative to Vladimir Putin, and vice versa. |
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In a normal democracy, a reshuffling of personnel occurs only after a new administration is voted into office. But in Russia’s “managed democracy,” elections serve more as the final chord in the highly orchestrated show rather than the prelude. |
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St. Petersburg’s newly-restored Estonian church, which sports a state-of-the-art concert hall, will host a promising concert this week featuring the cream of Russian rock and avant-garde musicians.
Due to be held on Thursday, Sept. 15, the concert, called “Territory of New Music,” celebrates the release of a DVD of a concert held in Tel Aviv, Israel earlier this year.
Most intriguingly, the concert will feature the musician and composer Vyacheslav Ganelin, who has been a rare sight in Russia since he emigrated to Israel in 1987. |
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MATTIA INSOLERA
GAY CULTURE IS BEING CELEBRATED VIA A SERIES OF EVENTS AROUND THE CITY THIS WEEK AS PART OF THE ANNUAL QUEERFEST EVENT. |
 Simon Patterson, the New Zealand-born, St. Petersburg-based singer/songwriter, has lived in the city for many years, but only started performing his own songs — characterized by interesting English-language lyrics and a touch of punk — in public in the last couple of years.
With local acoustic bassist and background singer Stanislav Manchinsky, Patterson, 36, who plays guitar and sings, can be found performing at local underground clubs like Fish Fabrique and the No Orchids piano bar several times a month.
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 Consulates of the U.K., the Netherlands and Sweden are supporting a major gay rights cultural event that opens in St. Petersburg this week, as national statistics show that homophobic attitudes are on the rise in Russia.
Called Queerfest, the ten-day festival, featuring music, dance, art, lectures and debates, was launched by Vykhod (Coming Out), the local LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) rights group in 2009. |
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Ïîëèòêîððåêòíîñòü: literally, “political correctness”; commonly, idiocy
If you read Russian newspapers or blogs, you’ll see the word ïîëèòêîððåêòíîñòü (political correctness) constantly. |
 A little corner of Italy has been brought to the beach of the Peter and Paul Fortress this week for the “Italia Comes to You” festival that aims to showcase Italian art, culture, fashion and music.
The event, which attracted 24,000 visitors when it was shown in Moscow earlier this month, has been organized by ENIT, Italy’s national tourism agency, whose declared aim is to promote the “excellence of Italy, showing the very best of Italian lifestyle” all over the world but with particular focus on the rapidly developing BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). |
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 Last week, actor Ivan Okhlobystin, who plays an irascible doctor in TNT’s medical comedy “Interns,” announced his plans to run for president. If that wasn’t ridiculous enough, pop diva Alla Pugachyova spoke out on her political views, backing billionaire turned politician Mikhail Prokhorov, whom she praised as a “real man. |
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Seaside sustenance
This cute and quirky dacha-style restaurant stands out in the concrete jungle that is this part of town, dominated by improbably huge Soviet-era residential buildings and student hostels. Vinaigrette’s interior is very colorful and welcoming, with bright green and red walls, multi-colored curtains, modern pine tables and incredibly comfortable stone-colored armchairs. |
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 MOSCOW — Most people within Russian rugby can agree on two things. While Russia’s debut in the Rugby World Cup is a landmark moment for a sport first introduced by foreigners building the Trans-Siberian Railroad in the 19th century, there is also little hope that the team will progress beyond the pool stages.
The Bears will play what is likely to be a closely fought match against the United States in their opening game in New Zealand on Sept. |
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 MOSCOW — A little blonde girl in a short-sleeved green and blue dress appeared on the staircase of a massive wooden house with a red ribbon stretched across a big glass sliding door. |
 NEW YORK — At 21, Vladimir Savinkin was one of the youngest employees at Cantor Fitzgerald, a global financial company whose U.S. headquarters were located on the top floors of the World Trade Center in Manhattan.
Having emigrated at 16 with his family from the Ukrainian port of Odessa, Savinkin had already made big strides in America. |
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 KABUL, Afghanistan — Taliban insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machine guns and assault rifles at the U.S. Embassy, NATO headquarters and other buildings in the heart of the capital Tuesday while suicide bombers struck police buildings in an attack blitz that displayed the ability of militants to bring their fight to the doorsteps of Western power in Afghanistan. |
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TEHRAN, Iran — An Iranian court Tuesday set bail of $500,000 each for two American men arrested more than two years ago and convicted on spy-related charges, clearing the way for their release a year after a similar bail-for-freedom arrangement was made for the third member of the group, their defense attorney said. |
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ATHENS, Greece — German Chancellor Angela Merkel sought to calm market fears that Greece is heading for a chaotic default on its debts as Europe struggles to contain a crippling financial crisis.
Her comments Tuesday come a day after her deputy raised the possibility of a default, and come ahead of another telephone discussion between Greece’s finance minister and his German counterpart. |
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OSLO, Norway — Norway’s ruling Labor Party won its best local election result in more than two decades and the anti-immigrant Progress Party plummeted in support two months after attacks by a right-wing fanatic killed 77 people. |
Temp: -1°C clear 
Issues Archive